Tag: Rhine Research Center

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Reiki Healing Practices

Image generated by Microsoft Designer AI

In my second book “Calliope O’Callahan and the Dowsers”, Callie befriends a Brazilian healer by the name of Isabelle. Brazil has a long and tolerant respect for psi-related abilities with at least two parapsychology facilities studying the phenomena. What Isabelle practices is a form of healing called Reiki. 

This is what the Google AI chatbot found:

What is Reiki and how is it done?

It’s a gentle, non-invasive energy healing practice that promotes deep relaxation and inner peace based on the belief that there is a universal life force energy that flows through all living things and can be harnessed to promote healing and well-being.

The philosophy of Reiki is rooted in the belief that we are all connected to a source of universal energy, which is often referred to as “Ki” or “Chi.” This energy is vital for our physical, mental, and emotional well-being, and when it is flowing freely, we are healthy and balanced. However, when our energy is blocked or disrupted, we can experience pain, illness, and emotional distress. This is often stated as having a blocked Chakra point in the body. 

Reiki practitioners believe that they can use their hands to channel this universal energy to help heal others. By placing their hands on or near the recipient’s body, they can help promote relaxation, balance the energy flow, and support the body’s natural healing processes.

It is typically administered in a series of sessions, each lasting for around 60 to 90 minutes. During a session, the recipient lies fully clothed on a massage table or sits comfortably in a chair. The practitioner places their hands on or near the recipient’s body and uses gentle touch to help promote relaxation and energy flow.

Although psi-related healing practices are accepted in other parts of the world, especially in South America, the issue is how Reiki may be adopted into the current medical practices and hospitals in the United States. Since medicine in the U.S. is arguably a for-profit model, with the insurance companies paying the practitioners, and it is highly regulated requiring medical personnel to be educated and certified, Reiki is not easily accepted. 

The Rhine research meeting had a Reiki practitioner discussing how the Cancer Center at Duke is integrating other forms of healing (acupressure, acupuncture, meditation) into its program for a more “integrated” healing experience. Before the Enlightenment, spiritual and natural healing practices were the norm, but scientific materialists removed those instead of scientifically sound medical practices. But humans are not machines and medical knowledge encompasses about 30% of what is going on in the human body, an integrated system. 

What is frustrating for physicians and pharmaceutical companies is the human’s ability to spontaneously heal from a disease state, or to use natural functions to reverse a chronic condition. We do not understand the process because there is little money to be made in either of these situations so little money goes into researching them. 

One of the arguments made during the research meeting is that non-medical healing techniques shouldn’t be part of the overall medical establishment and that it was never intended to be partnered with the for-profit medical model. I’m of two minds about this. On the side of keeping Reiki in the hands of the Reiki practitioners, I agree that if you have healing hands, give freely of your skill to those in need. On the side of regulating non-medical healing practices, some people are egregiously taking money from the desperate and those who are self-deluded into thinking they’re healers and advertise erroneously. The work that the Forever Family Foundation is doing might serve as a template for Reiki and other styles of non-medical healing techniques. They test the mediums that work with the bereaved friends and family of those who have passed on to make sure they are the genuine articles. It need not be as strenuous a certification as a medical practitioner requires, but at least provide a level of trust that is otherwise currently lacking.

Note: This blog post does not recommend that you forego medical treatment by a licensed medical provider. 

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And So It Begins….

You would think that finally getting a book edited, re-written, re-edited, designed, and uploaded for epub platforms would feel like “Well done, mate,” but it’s just the beginning. 

I still remember vividly walking into the Rhine during the Wednesday weekly research meeting and being met with cordial greetings. I was so excited to get started on my psychometry thriller. The very first chapter was already written:

A woman is working late in an office. She rubs her palms nervously along her skirt as she waits for the jump drive to finish uploading a file. The room is dark, with just a few lights on here or there making every corner a possible hiding place for something sinister. As the progress bar reaches one hundred percent, she grasps the jump drive and quickly shuts down the computer she isn’t supposed to have access to. The drive goes into a zippered pouch in her purse as she gets up to leave, feeling a bit less nervous. She wasn’t noticed, it’ll be fine. Echoes of her heels clicking on the polished wooden floors sound like little gunshots. She stops to remove her shoes and continues to the elevator in bare feet. If only she could stop the sound from her rapid heartbeats which seemed, to her, a dead giveaway to her position. She presses the down button, then, again and again, it is taking too long. Was that movement over there? The air conditioner whooshes to life and she jumps at the sound before recognizing it’s benign. The interminable elevator dings its arrival slowly opening its doors in mockery of her desire to be gone. She glances into the car for any other travelers, then enters pushing the lobby button several times to make sure the elevator is aware of her impatience. 

The doors open upon a darkened corridor, wide with shuttered shops and cafes along either side. She glances first down one side and then the other, listening for any movement, footfall, or breath. Satisfied that she is alone, the woman heads to the exit down the corridor to the right. Her walk is more brisk than usual and she fails to mask the sound of her movements. Just this right turn and then the door out of here, she thinks, breaking into a quicker gait. She rounds the corner, in sight of the glass exit doors, when a hand grasps her purse, forcing her to twirl in place. All she sees is a flash of metal, and then wetness oozes down her front. The assailant pulls the purse from her grasp and leaves her to hold her throat together with both her hands as she tries to bring air into her blood-filled trachea. She collapses to the floor. The last thing her ears perceive is the rapidly receding click, click of the murderer’s shoes, and the bang of the exit door. The last thing she sees as her vision tunnels is her outstretched arm with the charm bracelet that means so much to her.  

“Not again!” Violette said, who was grasping the charm bracelet in her left hand. 

That was a pretty good first chapter in my humble opinion, but now I had to learn more about psychometry and how psychics and law enforcement worked together to solve crimes. It wasn’t long after that Sally Rhine Feather said “Elizabeth, once you finish that novel, could you work on one for young people?” And Calliope O’Callahan was born. However, after every meeting I attended, every book and research paper I read, and every talk I listened to, I realized how deeply rich the world of parapsychology is. Like a kid in a candy store, I wanted Callie to have all the abilities known to science, but that isn’t realistic. I was also more interested in the experiences and the effects than in the characters I created. My first completed draft went to a content editor. She looked at the story and found the characters flat and the middle to be quite boring. After I pulled myself off the floor, I learned more about the craft of writing, especially what makes a character’s journey compelling. The next three years were spent on this journey until I felt I had a draft worth sending out to a few interested readers. Their notes were encouraging so off to the second editor it went. 

The next fun part was publishing. I listened to numerous authors and other members of the publishing world compare and contrast self-publishing with traditional publishing. The last few years with Amazon as King Kong has thrown traditional publishing into a tizzy. I won’t bore you with details, but it’s why I went the self-publishing route. Self-publishing is like opening your own business, so I have to absorb the costs and responsibilities of my copyright (book). I am fortunate to have a freshly graduated mass media major helping me with social media, but I enjoy teaching, so I’ll be going to events when that is possible, and I will add those to my website. 

After this six-year trek, I’m a published author, member of several parapsychology organizations, copy-editor for New Thinking Allowed publications and for the Journal of Parapsychology and newly minted member of the board for the Rhine. With these bona fides, I attended a local fan convention called ConGregate 9 in Winston-Salem to speak about parapsychology. Fans love paranormal subjects but have little if any awareness of what parapsychologists study, or that any of these experiences are real. It wasn’t attended by a large number of people, and as an unknown, I didn’t get top billing for my panels, but a con runner needs to think about what the fans want and I needed to keep my mind on the primary goal: get the subject of parapsychology out to a new group of people. It went well, and there was awe, support, curiosity, and vindication, which was very cool. I hope you can attend one of these fan conventions one day, or perhaps a library talk is more your speed, either way, it would be great to meet you to discuss more about your journey into parapsychology.

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J.B. and Louisa Rhine

J.B. and Louisa Rhine

Curious people become scientists. Some people find their original path of inquiry will make a giant curve toward an unexpected journey simply because they had one experience. Dr. Julie Beischel had intended to become one of a plethora of biochemists looking at potential new drugs but an incident with a spiritual medium derailed that idea. She and her husband now run the Windbridge Institute in California where they study mediums’ abilities.

J.B. Rhine and his wife Louisa were botanists having both received their degrees at the University of Chicago when they attended a lecture by the author Arthur Conan Doyle. Not only did Doyle write the wildly popular stories about Sherlock Holmes, but he was also an avid believer in the afterlife and the abilities of spiritual mediums to have access to those who had passed on. At that time, in 1922, the Society for Psychical Research studied spiritual and physical mediums, but not using lab-oriented, blinded, and reproducible experimentation. Botanists of the early twentieth century utilized the most robust statistical methods of the time and Rhines decided to apply these to study supernatural abilities. 

Since the SPR was a relatively new organization and focused mainly in the United Kingdom, it was difficult for J.B. Rhine to find an academic position studying anomalous abilities in the United States. He continued to teach botany and Louisa to teach Latin until, when they had nearly given up hope, J.B. found a home in the newly formed Psychology department at Duke University with like-minded chairman William McDougall — a past president of both the American and British SPR. By 1935, Rhine presided over the Parapsychology Laboratory and worked tirelessly to create rigorous experiments to show the statistical existence of extrasensory perception, a term he made famous in his book “Extrasensory Perception” published in 1934.

Along with developing experiments with her husband, Louisa Rhine became the unofficial curator of the numerous letters sent to the Rhine after J.B.’s bestseller gave those who had experienced anomalous events hope that they were not alone. She published several books about the anecdotal events explained in the thousands of correspondence they received. By 1980, Louisa became president of the SPR, the same year J.B. passed away.

The Rhine Research Center is the oldest parapsychology laboratory in the United States and the Rhines’ methodologies and experiments have been utilized and replicated in labs around the world. It holds the Alex Tanous library filled with hundreds of books on the various subjects parapsychology encompasses. Though it has not been associated with Duke University for many decades, it is located near the campus and attracts many academics from the University.

Sally Rhine Feather

I have had the distinct pleasure to have met and befriended their daughter, Sally Rhine Feather who, in her nineties, is still very active at the Center and who inspired me to write the Calliope O’Callahan novels. The Psy Syndicate is an amalgam of several parapsychology research centers like the Rhine, but I consider the Rhine my classroom filled with very smart, lovely people.